Wine Me Dine Me: Wiggly Bridge Distillery in York a new neighborhood hangout

Rachel Forrest

Thursday

Jun 15, 2017 at 2:00 AM

Like alehouses were a couple hundred years ago in Portsmouth, our local breweries are community gathering spots. Neighborhood residents and out-of-towners alike sit for hours playing board games, darts or corn hole, sipping their favorite brew and chatting away. You might take a tour of the brewery and certainly bring the latest release home in a growler or a sixer of bottles or cans.

All of that is at Wiggly Bridge in York, Maine, not a brewery, but a small-batch distillery in a beautiful barn built in 1876. There you can sip flights of their hand-crafted spirits and enjoy a cocktail made by lead mixologist Ashleigh Hamilton and her team, all made from the distillery's own spirits. And just like you would at a brewery, you can take home bottles of their small-barrel rum or bourbon, vodka or gin. You can even take a cocktail class or book a tour of the distiller, complete with sampling (hey, Father’s Day is coming up).

Wiggly Bridge Distillery is all about family. Father and son David and David Woods are in charge of the distilling while Amanda, David's (the son’s) wife, works with the operations side of things. Employees like Kevin McGann, the brand ambassador, help get the word out, as does Tim Golden, a longtime Seacoast beer and spirits enthusiast. It’s a tight-knit group, dedicated to spreading the word about local Maine distilling, one bottle and one cocktail at a time.

The best way to appreciate the spirits is to taste them, of course, and to have a conversation about how to use them in a cocktail. The drink menu is divided into sections featuring each of their spirits - rum, gin, vodka, white whiskey and bourbon - and ordering a few prompts much discussion. The tasting is another good option, but I like how they take full advantage of the nuances of each spirit in the drinks. Ashleigh Hamilton’s bar program is one of the most sophisticated in our area, complete with hand-cut king cubes and variations on classic cocktails with subtle differences that take full advantage of the spirit. At the same time, the atmosphere is relaxed and combines a bit of education with that lively community vibe a good bar brings.

I was particularly intrigued by their gin. David Sr. says he’s not a big gin drinker in part because he wasn’t fond of the pine flavor profiles, but David Jr. said they had to have a gin to round out the selection. They found a juniper from Croatia that is much more mellow with more floral and citrus flavors and wound up making a gin David Sr. liked. They include that juniper as well as jasmine, orris root, coriander and orange peel, which perfectly suits the Forager, a lightly sweet but herbaceous cocktail with the gin, maple, bitters and thyme. The gin list includes classics like a Bee’s Knees with lemon juice, honey and sage or a simple, refreshing G&T.

The distillery is also quite well known for its small-barrel bourbon, which they actually run out of. Right now they have 15,000 gallons of bourbon aging. They are laying up a four-year product now. The current batch they use in cocktails is made with a sour mash of corn, rye and malted barley with hints of vanilla and cocoa, which in a drink like their Marmalade Fig Manhattan with black walnut bitters and a rich fig marmalade brings out earthy flavors in each. They make a Painkiller, usually made with rum, with the small-batch bourbon, pineapple, coconut and orange, which is fun, and get a classic Manhattan or Old Fashioned.

My first go-to spirit is rum, and their barreled rum ages in their bourbon barrels resulting in a rum that resembles a cognac. The Woodses did a lot of research by building their own copper still at the family vacation home in Montserrat in the Caribbean and the result for the white rum is an island-style rum, which Ashleigh says is particularly good for tiki drinks and great in mojitos. For the white rum, they use two grades of molasses including a straight blackstrap and a fancy. They make a Painkiller with both the small-barrel and white rum and a rum and cola with their white rum and Maine Root Mexicane cola. I tried the Seaside Blossom with white rum, hibiscus, coconut, orange and soda and it showcased the floral nuances of their excellent white rum.

Vodka drinks include a simple vodka tonic or lemon martini and they make a mean Bridge Bloody with white whiskey and a house-made bloody Mary mix. A White Sazerac has wormwood (an ingredient in Absinthe), white whiskey bitters and sugar. And don’t fret about the lack of agave spirits. Although we’re in a region not known for mezcal or tequila distilling, The Woodses are looking to make a few blue agave spirits using 100 percent blue agave syrup with both white and aged versions. I presume we can look forward to Ashleigh’s version of a margarita.

Wiggly Bridge Distillery is a great way to spend an afternoon or evening and you’ll meet people from all over happy to chat as they would be at any bar. The unique difference is that you get to explore the full line of spirits the way they were meant to be enjoyed, both on their own with some description and background from the bartenders, and in craft cocktails that perfectly showcase their quality and geographical context in a setting filled with history and a feeling of community.

The Dish

The second annual Culinary Book Awards are on June 23 in Boston complete with a gala you can attend at the Public Library. In the meantime, vote for Portsmouth’s own chef Evan Mallett’s wonderful cookbook "Black Trumpet" to win the 2017 People’s Choice Cookbook of the Year. The polls close at midnight June 21 and the winner of that award and the winner of the New England Cookbook of the Year (there’s also a juried committee voting on six categories of cookbooks) will be announced at the gala, a grand celebration of New England cookbook authors, food writing and culinary books about New England foodways with foods inspired by local celebrity chef cookbook authors using seasonal ingredients. Vote here http://www.thereadablefeast.com/vote2017.html

Find out more about the organization and the gala right here. http://www.thereadablefeast.com

Rachel Forrest is a former restaurant owner who lives in Exeter (and Austin, Texas). She can be reached by email at rachel.forrest@localmediagroupinc.com. Read more of her Dining Out reviews online.

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